How to teach a student
10 effective teaching strategies for every classroom - Classcraft Blog
Many teaching strategies work for any classroom, no matter what the age of the students or the subject. When a teacher implements a combination of effective teaching strategies, their students have more opportunities to perform better in class.
There are many different approaches you can use in your classroom. Which ones will work best depends on your and your students’ preferences, as well as your schedule. Let’s take a look at some of the best strategies you can employ.
Photo: Google Edu1. Model as you teachWhen presenting a new subject to your class, it helps to include a demonstration. While some students will be able to grasp a new concept by hearing the information alone, others — particularly visual learners — will need to see it.
In certain classes, this is practically required. For example, when you’re teaching a math unit, you’ll usually need to display your work on the board, or else your students will be completely lost. This is how the class can follow along with better comprehension.
Some students will need to see more than one example to get a good understanding. Make sure that you include several different demonstrations for each new unit, as repetition is a big part of committing new ideas to memory. You’ll see a big difference in visual students’ test scores when you implement this method.
2. Make mistakesTeachers are the ultimate resource for students when it comes to learning. When you are presenting your lesson plans, you usually show the right way to do things. This is a great way to introduce a concept, but you also want to solicit a more in-depth understanding.
A great way to do this is to make intentional mistakes and ask the class to fix them. If you’re an English teacher, you can write an excerpt on the board and riddle it with grammar mistakes. Instruct your students to identify these mistakes and rewrite the passage correctly.
This method requires kids to apply the knowledge they’ve gained in class.
It also gives you a chance to evaluate how well each student comprehends the subject.
Once everyone has completed the assignment, you can review it as a class. Show each student how the passage should be written and address any questions that may arise.
3. Work as a teamSplitting the class up into different teams to complete an assignment is a teaching strategy that works wonders, especially at age groups where students insist on always working with their tight-knit circle of friends. Group assignments encourage teamwork and help your class to succeed.
For instance, in science, you can split the class into small groups for lab-based assignments and give each person a certain job to complete. You might have one person perform the experiment, another write notes, and someone else read instructions, for example.
Make sure to pair children who need extra support with those who have a better understanding of the material. This way, those who are stronger in the subject can share their knowledge to help their peers understand it better.
All in all, group work is a fun and interactive way to teach a lesson.
4. Encourage learning from experienceThe best lessons often happen outside of the classroom. Getting out into the real world offers a new perspective for children and can help them gain a more profound understanding of what goes on in the classroom.
Studying the different types of fish in a local pond is an excellent example of learning from experience. You would start in class, going over the different species and how each animal contributes to the environment around it.
Once you’ve completed the lesson, take the class to the local pond. Have them search for the different animals you discussed in class. After locating each animal, they will be able to observe the roles discussed earlier in class.
Field trips like this offer valuable, real-world experiences to students. They’ll gain confidence and motivation in class since they will be able to see that everything they learn has a connection to the world around them.
Letting students lead the class in teaching requires preparation and a deep understanding of coursework. You can assign this task individually or break up students into groups.
The goal of this strategy is to get your students to display the knowledge they have and to share it with their classmates. In order to give a quality lesson, they will need to put extra time into making sure they fully comprehend the project. If they struggle in some areas, they will be motivated to ask questions in order to get the grade.
You can help students prepare for this assignment by offering a rubric that outlines the areas in which they’ll be graded. You might give points based on lesson length, preparation, and creativity. The weight of each section will depend on the project and your preferences. Some teachers also allow the class to grade a section of the assignment. If you choose to go this route, it can be helpful to pass out a scoring guide to the class.
This way, each student knows how to grade the “teacher.”
Technology is perhaps the most powerful tool you have at your disposal. It’s an essential part of modern jobs and has a lot to offer in the way of education.
Computers, laptops, and tablets can allow you to enhance your lesson plans with online educational activities. There are several free resources that you can access with a simple Google search. Try looking up educational videos or playing free math and science games.
Your students will not only enjoy the time they spend online but also gain a deeper understanding of your classwork. Use all the resources you have at your disposal to your advantage — you’ll have a more engaged and motivated group of students as a result.
7. Try graphic organizersGraphic organizers such as pie charts and Venn diagrams are a great way to display information visually.
When you ask your class to create one, your students will have to apply their knowledge in a visual way. This will also help them form connections and understand similarities and differences.
Behavior management is a big part of being a teacher. Teaching strategies often give you plenty of structure regarding how to teach a class, but not how to control it. If you are experiencing some behavioral problems in class, programs like Classcraft can help.
Built by a teacher, Classcraft blends games and storytelling to motivate students and make learning more fun. Included in its many features is the ability to deliver teacher-designed curriculum in the form of games and Quests; a choose-your-own-adventure. With this game, teachers can align the objectives with the desired behavior in class. For example, if you want to solicit higher grades on homework, you can offer experience (XP) rewards within the game.
With XP, students can level up their character and acquire new accessories and abilities.
This incentivizes the positive behavior you are looking for. If you’d like, you can also discourage negative behaviors by locking students out of the game or taking away XP points.
This method is a great way to get students excited about doing well in class. It makes following the rules fun and solicits long-term behavioral improvement for many students. Teachers can also let their students play the quests at their own pace, so no one feels left behind or forgotten and teachers can easily give students extra support.
9. Utilize visual aidsVisual aids such as smartboards and projectors can ramp up your lesson in class. Some children can absorb information and have a deep understanding of it from hearing a lecture alone. Others are visual learners and need a little something more.
Since you need to appeal to those learners as well, a visual guide will be your best friend. Try displaying informative graphics that relate to your lesson on the board or projector.
Reference these illustrations as you speak to allow everyone in your class to get what they need out of the lesson.
Inquiry-based learning is a technique used to appeal to your students’ curiosity. Implementing it in the classroom means allowing the students to identify questions that interest them and to explore those questions in an educational setting.
Once your students have identified a topic of interest, they’ll need to research their chosen subject and deliver a presentation to the class. You must be there to offer support, such as by helping your students identify reliable online sources for research.
After the presentation is over, ask your students to reflect on the project as a whole. You want them to evaluate what went well, what didn’t, and what could be done differently in the future. Moreover, you want your students to focus on not only what they learned but also how they learned it.
This builds independent, confident learners who have a clearer path to success.
Photo: Google Edu
Teaching Students How—and When—to Change Their Minds
The process of learning often requires a willingness to consider new and sometimes conflicting information—and then use that information to update an opinion or form a new one. In the classroom, that’s a skill educators can model, and provide students with opportunities to practice, writes Katherine Burd for Education Week.
“The skill of changing one’s mind … benefit[s] learners, workplaces, and society as a whole,” writes Burd, who teaches English at The Chapin School, an independent K-12 school in New York City. “Developing and articulating an informed opinion, then considering new information seriously enough to change that opinion can stimulate new creativity in adult workplaces. This same process is also vital to democracy, where we must always be ready to change the way that we view issues as we learn more about them,” she concludes, touching upon a quality that’s been in short supply recently.
For students to learn these increasingly important (and rare) skills, schools must communicate the idea that they value students’ ability to practice flexible thinking and to accommodate uncertainty—but that mindset can be difficult to track through traditional assessment practices. “Though the process of learning requires a student to change her mind, our classrooms still mostly assess a student based on her ability to demonstrate a single concrete view,” writes Burd. While there are clearly facts that are beyond dispute and are unchangeable, when schools “mostly value student work that demonstrates certainty alone, then we reinforce the dangerous, unproductive idea that certainty is what matters.”
There are ways that educators can incorporate practices that nudge students toward developing and changing their opinions, Burd says. We took a few ideas from her original article and a few from our Edutopia archives; practices designed to cultivate in students the ability to stretch their thinking and incorporate new perspectives and knowledge.
Change classroom discussions: When educators set up “well-structured classroom discussions which teach and assess students’ ability to consider one another’s perspectives,” it can help shift the focus from “argumentation to idea evolution,” writes Burd.
At Highlander Charter School, classroom discussions about controversial topics form a regular part of the curriculum and students are expected to research, consider, and discuss issues from different perspectives. “Our students come with these very firm ideas and beliefs about certain topics, because it’s the only perspective they’ve known. So I really like to push the envelope with them,” says Soljane Martinez, a civics and social justice teacher at Highlander. “It’s a really important skill for you to have, looking at things from the point of view of someone who has a different opinion. It’s not a wrong versus right. It’s a ‘well, you know what? Let me take a step over to your side’.”
In Martinez’s 12th grade civics class, students gather in small groups, read through online resources on a topic such as LGBTQ rights, or who is to blame for poverty, then get into discussions during which they take opposing views and practice discussing sensitive topics respectfully and listening to opposing viewpoints with an open mind.
Highlight evolving thinking: Tasks that help students reflect on and describe their thinking process can help them build the skills to develop—and adjust—their viewpoint. “Templates for thinking about one’s own thinking already exist: structured process-writing assignments, problem sets and lab reports that ask students to submit, alongside final drafts, logic maps and thinking narratives that flag moments of idea development,” writes Burd.
She also recommends remediation projects, “which ask students to translate core understandings of course material to new media forms,” and encourage students to consider concepts from new perspectives.
Model hidden thinking and self-talk: When educator Stephanie Toro models how to solve a problem for students in her STEM classes, “I talk about every aspect of what I am doing out loud. In fact, I over-talk, providing reasoning for every step,” writes Toro, who is an assistant professor at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia.
“I will even include moments of vulnerability and model the fact that I don’t always know what to do, but I will discuss my options and my decision process.”
As her students observe Toro work through a problem, she likes to intentionally make mistakes and then demonstrate how to check her work to correct errors. That modeling helps students understand that thinking can evolve, that even adults need to work through ideas, perhaps absorb new information, rethink their steps, to arrive at new solutions. “It’s essential that we explicitly show students this internal dialogue to model problem-solving,” Toro writes.
Abandon your own certainty: For kids to learn the value of keeping a flexible mindset, adults in all spheres of students’ lives need to model it themselves. “We—not just educators, but also school leaders, politicians, parents, and citizens—need to abandon our own desires to present certainty in our opinions and start revealing just how often we, too, change,” Burd writes.
“Many students believe that their teachers should show absolute mastery of and certainty about material. When a teacher admits to a deficit in knowledge or understanding, though, she opens up space for students to explore and understand on their own.”
How to teach students to be organized?
“Oops, I forgot to do my homework”, “oops, I left my textbook at home”, “sorry, our lesson completely slipped my mind”… How often do you hear such phrases from students? Unfortunately, every teacher may encounter a disorganized student. However, for success, including in the study of a foreign language, a simple and understandable system of organization is essential. We have put together a few simple tips to help your students become collected and disciplined.
1. Conduct the lesson always at the same time
If the lesson is on Monday at 14, and on Thursday at 15.30, then the probability that the student will forget about the lesson or just get confused in time is much higher, so always schedule classes at the same time, even if your student has a flexible schedule.
2. Always negotiate terms for cancellations and reschedules
Students must be clear that they are responsible not only for their time, but also for yours. Of course, now in the field of education, most students take this lightly, they pay money and the teacher must provide a service. and BUT students must understand that if the class is suddenly canceled, the teacher's valuable time must still be paid. Therefore, in private lessons, I always ask for payment in advance, non-paid cancellation of a lesson can be done only 24 hours before the lesson. Of course, unforeseen situations happen, but these rules exclude the possibility of a student canceling a class simply because he is in a bad mood.
3. Keep in touch with students
I constantly keep in touch with all students via skype, instant messengers. I always prepare for the lessons in a day, so during the preparation, I remind not very organized students about the lesson and homework, ask if there are any questions about homework, send additional materials, etc.
At Skyeng, students have class reminders in their personal account.
4. Discuss effective time management
We already wrote about this in this article.
5. Always give homework
Every student should develop the habit of doing homework before each class. Therefore, after each lesson, it is necessary to give homework, even if there was a test at the lesson. This can be either homework in a workbook or assignments for the development of autonomous learning. Moreover, try to give out the same amount of homework. One important part of time management is estimating the time it takes to complete a given task and keeping track of the time you actually spend on it. Giving a fixed, consistent amount of homework before each class will help students plan their time.
6. Ask the student to bring a notebook and a folder
The student should have everything related to classes in one place, textbooks, workbook, handouts.
The student must have a notebook, a notebook, a diary, where he writes down his homework, rules, words, and performs written assignments. All handouts can be put into one folder (binder), separating handouts, homework, etc. into blocks. And it's really convenient!
Simple time management and self-organization skills are tools that will help students successfully achieve short and long term goals.
We wish you successful lessons!
Earn with Skyeng
Maria Cedrik
Certified teacher (TKT 2,3, YL, CELTA, IELTS, TOEFL)
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How to teach students who do not have time to study
It all started like in a fairy tale: promises, burning eyes, meetings every week .
.. But a couple of months have passed since the beginning of the school year, and the prince student comes to class less and less often Bring homework done with you. But at the same time, “he really, really wants to study and learn the language.”
What to do?
The first option is to start looking for mistakes in your teaching methods. Many young specialists sin with this. It always seems that it was you who didn’t explain something, you didn’t motivate, you couldn’t explain why to learn English.
But let's face it: if adults come to your class, they probably know why they are doing it. Even if their motivation is to “learn the language for yourself”.
So I suggest going to plan #2 and start making the most of the time we have in class. It works like this - as soon as a student begins to “catch” the first linguistic successes, he instantly wakes up and reconsiders his attitude to learning.
I want to tell you about the techniques that a teacher should use if he has a busy student.
Practical Homework
Even if you give a student five tiny exercises to take home, there is a good chance that one of them will be done.
The simple solution is not to give him these exercises. Encourage the student to use knowledge in a more practical way.
In place of the Workbook exercises on “travelling,” suggest making a list of the things the student takes with them on business trips or vacations. Instead of writing an essay on an economic topic, offer to subscribe to a foreign news feed and follow the economy of the country where you live for a week.
Here the vocabulary will catch up, and living constructions, and the student will have something to say on the topic.
Conscious work in the classroom
If a student likes to “just talk” and does not find teaching in CLM suitable for him, forget about CMC. A huge field of opportunities opens up for you!
The main thing that is required of the teacher is to create an environment for the recycling of vocabulary: each lesson, learned units should appear in your student's speech.
This can be achieved if the student fills in a table in Google Docs with words and their translation/definitions right at the lesson. You can also use this table to create several cards with words for each lesson that you will work with during the lesson.
In order to use grammatical constructions, one must first understand the contexts in which they are used. Therefore, offer your student as much material as possible for perception: articles from foreign media, excerpts from podcasts, movie examples - make all this an indispensable part of your lesson.
If a student sees, listens to, writes and speaks a text with a construction, it is more likely to be deposited in his memory, even if he does not complete exercises on the topic at home.
Guide, not force
Have you heard of language coaching? This is a relatively new direction that helps students set their own goals and track their progress in English.
Why is this useful when teaching busy students? Because it gives students more responsibility for learning.
There are always topics for discussion, there is always an opportunity to assess progress. Moreover, language coaching assumes that the student will determine for himself the number of exercises that he will perform, the number of texts that he will work on, the number of podcasts that he will listen to.
The teacher's task is to guide, not force.
You can start with one coaching session per month or every two weeks; you can offer such sessions (15 minutes per week) to busy students as a gift when paying for the course, you can conduct them via Skype.
Busy students are not a special category of students. These are almost all adults who are ready to pay for education, but are not ready to pore over paperwork to achieve results.
This should not be taken too dramatic. Just move such tasks from the problem category to the challenge category and enjoy your work.
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